Mozilla to bring virtual reality to browser

Last summer, Mozilla launched a very experimental version of Firefox with support for web-based virtual reality apps that could be experienced through the Oculus Rift.

Earlier this week, support for WebVR also landed in Firefox’s Nightly and Developer Edition release channels, Tech Crunch reports.

At a talk last summer, Mozilla’s Josh Carpenter argued that the organization knows VR will be a “really big deal” and because “it presents a really great challenge — and we like great challenges.” To give users that feeling of actually being present in a different world (and not just that of looking at a simulation), you need to get the latency between head movements and the screen reacting to them down to an absolute minimum. Mozilla argues that, in the end, all of this work will not just benefit the VR experience, but also the Web experience as a whole.

For now, the new Firefox builds only work with the Oculus Rift (though you still have to install a small plugin to make this work), but Mozilla says it also plans to add built-in support for Linux, Firefox for Android and Google’s Cardboard.

With projects like asm.js and others, Mozilla has worked hard to bring native-like speeds to browser- and JavaScript-based applications.